Being Here
by QuickSilverFox3
Summary: Harry is a Squib. Sure, he can attened Hogwarts thanks to Dumbledore but no-one wants him there. He's alone and he's angry and he doesn't know what to do until two strange men move in next door to number 4 Privet Drive. Written for IWSC Year 2 Round 1


**School: Hogwarts Year 2**

**Special Rule: AU I haven't written before: Squib!Harry**

**Theme: Privet Drive - Not being accepted**

**Main prompt: Jealousy [emotion]**

**Extra prompts: **[Quote] "Don't let yesterday take up too much of today." - W Rogers; [Character] Argus Filch

**WC: 3228**

It wasn't fair. The words ran through Harry's mind, tumbling and falling over each other until it was a meaningless, soundless roar just behind his eyes. The sun beat down relentlessly on the cracked paving stones that Harry roamed, feet pounding in a never-ending march, driven on towards nowhere but unable to sit still.

Hogwarts was meant to have been everything he had dreamed off, an escape from Privet Drive and the cold, uncaring words of his Aunt and Uncle and the harsh fists of his cousin. But it was the same. He had a taste of what it would have been like to be normal in the Wizarding World.

On the train, people flocked to him, faces pressed against the glass before they moved in. He had been trapped like the Boa Constrictor in the zoo, but he hadn't minded. His stomach was full, pastry crumbs littering his clothes promising to bring uncomfortable itching in his near future but Harry's heart was filled with laughter and hope. He was looking forward to this big bright future filled with people who wouldn't be scared away by the ferocious temper of his cousin.

Then it all came crashing down.

"Hey, kid!"

Harry stopped, reflexively glancing behind him, checking to make sure it was, in fact, him this man was speaking to. The street behind him was empty, heat haze hovering in the distance. A crisp packet swirled across the road, scuttling along the black tarmac. Unconsciously his feet had begun to carry him back towards Privet Drive, and he was stood outside Number 6, a house that had been put up for sale. It had provided Aunt Petunia with an endless stream of gossip over the previous few nights when it was revealed two men would be moving in.

Harry carefully studied the man in front of him, taking everything in with a single sweep of his eyes. The man was slightly blurry due to Harry's unfitting glasses, but he could see the main points. His hair was long and black, a hair bobble on his wrist, suggesting he occasionally wore it up. Tattoos covered his arms in a riot of colour, never seeming to settle on one particular style with images that reminded Harry of watercolours blending with dotted pictures. His clothes were dark and covered in white dust, smeared handprints covering his jeans with a single print over his heart like a badge. Any single one of those traits would have sent Aunt Petunia into a fit. Still, when Harry looked into his face, eyes narrowed slightly to see better, he looked kind, a wide grin on his face.

"Do you know where the post box is?" he asked, accent momentarily catching Harry's ear.

He sounded as if he was from London, but the edges rounded by many years somewhere up North, a faint burr lingering on the r's.

"There's one just around the corner," Harry answered, pointing past number four.

"Ah, thanks," the man laughed, rubbing one hand over the side of his face, dislodging more of the faint white dust. "Moving is a struggle."

He appeared to catch himself before he said anything further, nodding his goodbyes at Harry as he turned to head back towards the house. He stopped and turned on his heel, another thought seeming to occur to him.

"You live next door, don't you?" he asked, glancing towards number four.

Harry nodded, following the man's gaze and catching the telltale shift of the curtains that signified Aunt Petunia was watching.

"Yeah, with my aunt, uncle and cousin," Harry replied, already playing out the rest of the conversation in his mind.

First would come the look of apprehension, the questions that meant well but reopened barely healed wounds, and then came the icy coldness, no longer viewing him as a child but as a problem.

The man only nodded once as if this was confirming something he suspected.

"Sirius!"

The yell made the man jump, eyes darting from side to side as if looking for an escape before he relaxed minutely.

"Got to run kid, don't tell Moony I was slacking off," he said with a wink, picking up a bag from the ground next to his feet.

It was a trunk, the corners battered and scuffed, so worn that barely any of the original colour remained. It looked like an older version of Harry's Hogwarts trunk. Heart in his mouth he stared dumbly up at the man, who only winked before turning and walking back into the house. And Harry had to return to number four Privet Drive.

⁂

"Freak."

Harry didn't know the student, wouldn't be able to pick him out of a crowd, but he wasn't surprised by the hate-filled words slung his way. The shoulder would have knocked him sideways, should have sent him spinning, but he was used to it by now.

From Dudley's punches and insults to the faceless mass of Hogwarts students, nothing had changed. Harry pulled his bag further up onto his shoulder and kept his head down, hoping to disappear amongst the stone walls and crowds of students that hated him.

Harry could remember counting down the days to Hogwarts, weeks trickling by in a slow stream of crosses on a calendar. Now he used that same calendar -edges curling and colours faded - to countdown the days until summer, jealousy burning hot in his stomach until it threatened to close his throat.

Professor McGonagall glanced over at him during her lecture, face as impassive as ever. Still, Harry thought he could see something resembling pity in her gaze. It didn't matter. She couldn't fix this. Harry sank down further in his seat, dust lying on the seats next to him, and continued reading the book he'd hidden there previously. It was too risky to keep it on his person. Three previous library books had been destroyed for him to learn that, leaving him to face Madam Prince's wrath with nothing but stuttered apologies and a book soaked black with ink.

This book was small enough to hide in the slats beneath the seat, barely seventy pages of close-spaced type and Harry's eyes ached after reading it. Every word was copied into a notebook, every inkblot from his shaking hand, setting him back another word, but he would do it.

'_Squibs and Their Role in the Magical World_' the title whispered dark letters against a dark background. The library card was untouched, bearing only one other name. Before Harry, there had been A. F. 1960, 1962, 1967 and 1970. He wasn't completely alone in this world that hated him both in and out of school.

Laughter caught his ear, and Harry glanced up despite himself, unable to stop the reflexive action, knowing it would hurt him and yet desperate for some small connection. Ron Weasley sat in the middle of a group of Gryffindor's from their year group, the rest dissolved into fits of barely stifled giggles. Seamus' hair was gently smoking as McGonagall descended on them. For a brief few seconds, Ron's eyes caught his and Harry could remember the slow shift of the train as they hurtled towards Hogwarts in those heady early days. He remembered the joy like syrup in his veins. Harry remembered when joy turned to ice just as quickly, Ron's grin falling from his face, instead, twisting into the same look of disgust as everyone else.

He was less than nothing. Harry was a Squib, only here because Dumbledore bent the rules, and no-one would let him forget it.

⁂

The car had barely left the driveway, carrying the Dursley's away for the day before Harry slipped out the back door. He was desperate to escape the oppressiveness of the house, the cloying scent of bleach and sickly sweet perfume. The grass clung to his jeans, dying and yellowing in the heat. Still, Harry moved through it, his mind set on his goal: a spindly seeming tree in the corner, Christmas lights still hanging from it's exposed branches. Leaves clung to the higher boughs, just enough to hide Harry from sight.

He knew spying on the neighbours made him just as weird as they all thought he was, thanks to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's lies. But they seemed to be the closest thing he had left to the Wizarding World after his school supplies had been locked away in Harry's old cupboard beneath the stairs. Harry had narrowly avoided that fate himself, saved and damned in equal measure by a letter from Dumbledore, explaining his 'condition', as the Headmaster delicately put it, to his Aunt and Uncle. The new neighbours, they were wizards, Harry _knew_ it. But still, the small prickle of fear at the base of his spine stayed his tongue. If he could just see, could somehow confirm they were magic, Harry would be able to talk to them openly, properly.

They might not know. Neither of the men looked at him with the disgust of the other students; the boy branded as a saviour, yet unable to do even the smallest wisp of magic when he wanted to, it solely reacted to danger rather than allowing Harry free use of it. His teachers looked at him with pity, but they didn't, couldn't understand what Harry felt. How much he wanted to be normal, to be able to use his magic as the other students did. He knew what jealousy felt like, the emotion colouring most of his childhood as he was pushed to the side by the Dursleys, forced to watch as Dudley received everything he ever wanted. Now, the one thing Harry had that Dudley didn't, he could _never_ possess had been taken away from him in the blink of an eye. Was it any wonder he had been driven to hide in a tree, desperate for any connection to the Wizarding World that didn't look at him as if his parents had died for nothing?

The second man, Moony as the tattooed man had called him almost two weeks ago, could be seen through the slightly warped glass of the kitchen. He moved slowly, slower than Harry would have expected him to move, pausing as if to brace himself for pain before completing any task. The current whispers, gleefully collected by Aunt Petunia and relayed to Uncle Vernon over dinner — whose only response was a grunt as he flicked through the evening paper — was that the man was a reclusive academic. This was judging by the large books he was spotted reading, obviously hiding from some sort of scandal related to his 'partner'. Her lip would always curl at the mention of the first man. His actual name had escaped Harry, unable to remember what had been yelled at their first meeting, as he was referred to as '_that_ man', but Moony called him Padfoot.

Given some of the names that passed as normal in the Wizarding World, Harry could only hope they both had nicknames. Padfoot was proving to be just as much of a wave in the still pond of Little Whinging as Harry had hoped he would be. In the past two weeks, he had been caught working on a motorbike with his shirt off causing one woman to drive into a lampost. He had insulted Mrs Eastaughffe's prize treacle tart when he had bumped into her at the supermarket, and insisted — and this was his most heinous crime of all — on kissing Moony in public. Harry couldn't be sure that the man knew exactly how much of a ruckus he was causing, but judging by the wide grins and winks whenever he caught Harry's gaze in public, he was fairly certain he knew.

Harry shifted slightly on the branch, feeling the muscles in his leg warp and ache, a familiar feeling of deadness abating from his arm in the wake of pins and needles. They had to slip up at some point, they _had_ to. The wood was cold and slightly damp against his forehead. Harry rested against the trunk, his eyes half-lidded as he stared through the remaining foliage into their back garden. Moony appeared to be mixing something, or possibly washing dishes, brow set in concentration, smoke rising from whatever he was working on—

The potion exploded in a cloud of green sparks that spat in all directions as Padfoot threw it out of the window, It seemingly came from nowhere, a wand in his outstretched hand as he called, a bubble appearing mere seconds later to contain it. The sound was gone so suddenly, it left Harry's ears ringing with the absence of it, his nails cutting into the tree as he clung to his perch, almost unable to believe his eyes.

Padfoot fixed the window with a flick of his wand. He Vanished the potions remnants in the same lazy motion, and turned back to Moony, cupping his face with both of his hands as he inspected the other man closely. Harry moved, just wanting to see, it _was_ a wand! He was magic! Like Harry was meant to be.

He couldn't remember the branch breaking beneath him, only the feeling of falling, earth rushing up to meet him too fast and too slow all at the same time. Then — darkness.

⁂

"What are you doing out of bed?"

The sudden voice made Harry jump, hands covered by the enormous sleeves of his pajamas coming up to scrub away his traitorous tears. They continued to fall despite his efforts, running down his cheeks as the boy accepted his fate. Being expelled would at least get him away from the jeers, even if nothing could take away the jealousy he would carry with him for the rest of his life.

"It's the Potter boy, my sweet."

Harry glanced up, straight into the luminous eyes of Mrs Norris as she wound round Flich's shuffling ankles, always managing to be where the old man wasn't. Harry didn't want to be out here, trapped to roam the corridors rather than curled up in his warm bed, waiting for sleep to descend on him and bring him one day closer to some sort of freedom. He'd heard all the whispers about Filch and his cat, all tinted with a dislike for the shuffling man and his cat, but no-one laid a finger on the animal for fear of reprisal.

"Sorry sir," Harry mumbled, voice small, shoulders hunched.

He waited for Filch to drag him away to the dungeons, to hang him from the ceiling like he threatened to do when students ran away from him in his strange creaking voice. Filch carefully, slowly sat down on the step next to him, exhaling as he did so. Mrs Norris leapt up between the pair, purrs rumbling through Harry's arm.

"Now," Filch began, voice hushed in the silence of the castle. "There aren't many of us around. Squibs, I mean," he added, seeing the confusion pass over Harry's face. "You're doing a big thing, being here."

"Feels like no-one wants me here," Harry said before he could fully consider the words, eyes widening as they escaped him into the quiet.

"No. They don't," Filch agreed with a cackle, yellowing teeth bared in a grin. "They don't want you here, and that's why you should be here. Cause problems for them, just like your father and his friends — worthless troublemakers they were — and things will change."

Harry's head spun, unable to move from his spot, as Filch pushed himself back onto his feet, bones cracking as he did so. His father? Causing trouble? Harry should be here?

"Get yourself back to bed," Filch said brusquely, Mrs Norris meowing as if to punctuate his words, and shuffled off.

Harry stared numbly, remembering the initials written onto the library book, and just thinking for a moment, head too full to do anything else.

⁂

"Hi, Harry."

Harry groaned, coming back into consciousness slowly and painfully. Instead of the cold hard earth, he was expecting to wake up on, he was lying on something soft. He was warm, he was safe. He never wanted to wake up from this wonderful dream. But all good things had to end, especially if they were happening to him.

Harry opened his eyes and stared up into the gently bobbing light hanging just above his head. It moved as the man kneeling next to him waved his hand, the light leaving purple spots dancing in Harry's vision.

"Are you in any pain, Harry?" Moony asked, sounding worried for some reason, raising himself up on his knees to peer into Harry's face, bracing himself on the sofa.

"I'm fine," Harry answered reflexively, trying to push himself up into a seated position as Moony sat back to let him, ready to catch him if he fell.

Their house was even more amazing on the inside, everything brimming with magic like electricity on Harry's skin. A cauldron bubbled away beneath the kitchen window, Padfoot sitting next to it on the counter, pale-faced and chewing on the nails on one of his hands. He grinned at Harry as their eyes met through the open doorway, visibly relaxing as Harry grinned back. Books detailing rituals and spell movements, runes and potions were scattered on every available surface, several lying on the floor next to the sofa.

"I knew you were wizards," Harry said, unable to hold back his delight.

He wasn't alone anymore, trapped in Privet Drive away from the magical world that at least only disliked him rather than hating him outright.

"We are," Moony confirmed, staring pointedly in Padfoot's direction, one eyebrow slowly rising which the other man ignored with the practice of several years.

"Why are you here?" Harry asked, looking between the two men, seeing a silent conversation play out in the set of their jaws and the minute twitches of their mouths.

Moony seemed to win the entirely silent argument as Padfoot slid down from the counter, sliding a lid over the cauldron with a heavy thunk and sitting down next to Moony, leaning into him.

"We were worried about you," Moony said finally. "We knew your parents, we were good friends with them. And with everything that came out in the papers—" he stopped and shrugged helplessly, unable to find the words.

"I'm a Squib," Harry said, unable to keep the sour note out of his voice.

"I'm a werewolf," Moony countered, Padfoot's head whipping up in surprise. "Just got to deal with it."

"You don't mind?" Harry asked, voice small once again.

These men knew his parents, they were magic like his parents had been.

"Not at all. We want to help," Padfoot said, voice hoarse, leaning forward as if disbelieving Harry was truly there. "My family's an old one, lots of Squibs so can help you with what magic you have—"

"And my family's Muggle so can help with finding alternatives," Moony finished.

Both watched Harry intently, the tension palpable in the air. Filch's words echoed in his mind: '_And that's why you should be here._' Maybe it was time to move forward, to unstick himself from the mire of jealousy and prove he had every right to be there as any of them.

Harry grinned at the pair and nodded. "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."


End file.
